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Clements murder: Evan Ebel may have been out of prison 4 years too soon, documents say

By Jace Larson9News

Posted:
03/29/2013 06:29:02 PM MDT

Updated:
03/30/2013 11:42:11 AM MDT

Evan Ebel (AP file photo)

The parolee accused of killing Colorado's prisons chief may have been released four years too soon, according to Department of Corrections and Fremont County Court documents.

Evan Ebel, suspected of killing DOC chief Tom Clements on March 19, was released Jan. 28 on mandatory parole after serving eight years for a number of offenses, including breaking into a car and a home, and car-jacking and pistol whipping a man in Adams County.

But according to a plea agreement filed in Fremont County, Ebel should have served another four years for slipping out of handcuffs on Nov. 27, 2006, and punching a prison guard.

According to that document, filed in April 2008, he pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and was given a four-year sentence to be served consecutive to his original term.

But when the agreement was entered into the sentencing mittimus — the document used to direct the prison system — the prison term had been changed to be served concurrently, according to files released by DOC Thursday.

Adrienne Jacobson, a DOC policy analyst, said the prison system does not have access to information contained in a plea agreement.

"The department's authority to confine a defendant is based on the information that is contained on the sentencing mittimus," she wrote in an e-mail. "That is the only sentencing document we receive. The mittimus we received did not state that the sentencing was consecutive and the default is to a concurrent sentence."

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Bryan L. Hunt, who prosecuted the assault case in Fremont County court, said he does not remember Ebel's case specifically, but he said, as a matter of policy, he would never agree to a concurrent sentence for an inmate accused of committing a criminal act in prison.

"I was just afraid that it really didn't mean anything if you, for example, hit a guard and received a concurrent sentence," said Hunt, who has since retired. "That was nothing for what you've done."

If the judge who handled the case changed the sentence when Ebel appeared in court in June 2008, it is not reflected in the court minutes. 9News has requested a transcript of the hearing.

Attorney Scott Robinson, who represented Ebel in some criminal cases but not this particular case, said Friday night, "It's inescapable that a mistake was made.

"It does not appear as if anyone at the Department of Corrections made a mistake at all. They honored the sentencing order signed by the sentencing judge. They had no choice but to do it.

"It's absolutely fair to call it a clerical error."

Ebel, who died in a shootout with Texas law enforcement on March 21, also is a suspect in the March 17 killing of Domino's Pizza delivery driver Nathan Leon. A Domino's jacket and pizza carrier were found in the trunk of the Cadillac that Ebel was driving in Texas. Bullet casings found at the scene in Texas matched those found at Clements' home in Monument, where he was killed when he answered the door.

On Thursday, The Denver Post reported Ebel, who served much of his eight-year sentence in administrative segregation, was ordered to be paroled 115 days early because, under a 2011 law, he qualified for earned time even while in solitary. He was to serve three years on mandatory parole.

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